Quote from a Republican friend of mine, “I gave the debate to Biden but am surprised my wife gave it to Palin and more shocked Pundits are giving it to her too…Don’t get me wrong… Biden didn’t kick her Ass in anyway shape for form. He just won on points like in a boxing match. I guess people liked her style as opposed to his washingtonian talking points.“

“It’s safe to say that I’ve snapped. That something broke, like one of those robots you can conquer with a logical conundrum. All my life I’ve looked at this faulty equation, trying to understand, and I’ve shorted out. I don’t pretend to be a great guy; I know really really well about objectification, trust me. And I’m not for a second going down the “women are saints” route – that just leads to more stone-throwing (and occasional Joan-burning). I just think there is the staggering imbalance in the world that we all just take for granted. If we were all told the sky was evil, or at best a little embarrassing, and we ought not look at it, wouldn’t that tradition eventually fall apart? (I was going to use ‘trees’ as my example, but at the rate we’re getting rid of them I’m pretty sure we really do think they’re evil. See how all rants become one?).”

I’m not going to be writing here too much for the time being – maybe about a month. Right now, I am doing my best to practice my spanish, so I’m going to be restricting myself from writing in english. So, I’m going to be writing at Mi Vida En Español. Let’s see how that goes, huh? :)

The experiences this person blogs about are common to anyone who lives in a big city, not just to tourists. It’s well-written and worth sharing with anyone considering moving to or visiting a “Third World” nation or places like NYC.

I never worked side-by-side with you, and it took me seeing your face on the news websites before your name rang with familiarity. But the recognition of your smile was instantaneous. I had no idea you had joined the Peace Corps and decided to do so much more with your life than pushing pen to paper. I admire that. You decided to give so much and, for that, your death weighs so heavily. When we heard you were missing, we were so hopeful that maybe, maybe, you were “just kidnapped” and would return to your friends soon. For our line of work, I guess we should have known better.

A passionate, funny woman who clearly had a huge heart and who was supposed to return home soon; instead, left in a shallow grave so many miles away. It completely breaks my heart. A woman should be able to travel anywhere in the world safely — especially when she’s devoting herself to helping its people.

A life lived with purpose, bettering the lives of people around the world, creates a vacuum when it’s gone, and the pain of it reaches beyond those closest to you. A lot of people talk about changing the world or doing something “more” with their lives — you did that and probably without realizing the impact you’d have. I don’t know the proper way to make a tribute to you but I think it’ll be found through people being inspired by your example and following your lead.

How often do we reach moments in our lives when we’re sorry we didn’t get to know someone better and find out too late just how special they were? Julia was someone like that and volunteered her life to people like that. And it wasn’t like she was some super-self-sacrificing, humanoid who didn’t feel the sacrifice — from her blog you can tell she had uprooted herself from a comfortable life surrounded by people she loved — and that makes her sacrifice mean that much more. She was doing something that truly challenged her.

News of her death.
Read her own words about her time in the Philippines here. Another article about her here and a friend and fellow volunteer writes about her here.

I registered a website domain with godaddy.com – long before I remembered dreamhost.com existed. I was wary of godaddy because of their ugly website – yes, I judge a website’s reputation by their design. But, for some unrecallable reason, I registered my domain with them.

BAD MOVE! Their customer service is ridiculously uninformed and unreliable and you might think they offer you ways to protect your domain, but in fact, they not only keep unauthorized changes from happening, they keep YOU from making changes, thus holding the domain you paid for hostage!

NEVER register with godaddy.com. Go immediately to dreamhost.com or some other reputable, friendly, reliable company.

One wonderful thing about poetry is how writers can play with the motions their lips and tongues make with different sound textures and rhythms.

I had been riding the bus home today thinking about my attempts to learn spanish and the debate my husband and I have at times about whether learning english is more difficult or if spanish is. I believe english is, and this is the poem I was thinking of when I said so! Thanks to John Baker’s blog for publishing it!!

(I just wouldn’t have used the word foreigners since foreign to what? This is about non-english speakers. In most of the world, they’re not foreigners!) :)